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I am delightfully surprised that I can actually tell by looking at the stills for "Mr. Fox" that it is a Wes Anderson film. I just couldn't quite get it through my head how a director could switch to an animated feature and retain his strong sense of composition and style.

Now I can see how with the addition of motion and sound the andersonishness of the movie will even be more apparent. Most comedy films just don't cut it for me but somehow Anderson's work always slays me.

The prospect of Wes Anderson (love Rushmore, quite fond of Tenenbaums) adapting Roald Dahl has always intrigued me but those stills make me want to see the film right NOW. October (the pic's release date for the UK) seems so far away..

If you think October seems far away, imagine how far away January seems. We won't see this in Australia till then!
The pictures look gorgeous.
I think this film is the change in direction that Anderson needed. The Darjeeling Ltd. was really stale, but here he seems to have broken out from the formula he was becoming increasingly restrained by, even though its still unmistakably his work.

Wow, I didn't know what to expect with this film (frankly, I expected something more bright and cartoonish) - I am blown away just by these stills. Wes Anderson is a real talent, I don't care what anyone has to say to the contrary. This looks like it could be something truly special.

Love it. Mostly these little 2D touches here and there.

This looks

Spoiler

fantastic

I had to say it before someone else.

It's strange to see so much slapstick in a Wes Anderson movie, but hey, I'm happy.

That looks...rather amazing. Love the animation. Reminds me of the Rankin-Bass stuff rather then being too smooth. Funny too.

If this and Where the Wild Things Are turn out to be successful expect a deluge of hipster directors adapting children books from the 60s. Up next: Darren Aronofsky's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Quite excited for this! The friends I've shared it with think that it looks a bit too "jerky..." That being said, I think the animation fits quite nicely.

Love the "Band of Outsiders" outfitting for the characters.

That's "Band of Outsiders" the overpriced clothier - not the film of the same name.

Looks like the lowkey kind of kid's TV special a lot of us would have happily grown up with

From The Playlist:

Man, just when you thought the whole "controversy" about Wes Anderson directing parts of his upcoming animated film, "Fantastic Mr. Fox," via video chat, phone and email was over, the L.A. Times stirs it up again with quotes from both parties and quite a few rather stinging and unfavorable ones from Anderson's British animation crew.

It's probably safe to say that Anderson won't ever be working again with cinematographer Tristan Oliver. "It's not in the least bit normal," Oliver said about Anderson's proclivities to work via email and not on the East London set. "I've never worked on a picture where the director has been anywhere other than the studio floor!"...

(See the article for the rest.)

It's pretty obvious that Anderson was going for a completely different aesthetic than what is found in the typical 2009 CGI-assist stop-motion found in the work of Burton, Selick, Park, et. al. I love their stuff too, but early looks at The Fantastic Mr. Fox are evidence of something truly special and original. If Oliver and company weren't interested in that, they shouldn't have signed on with a personality like Anderson in the first place. Everyone knows he's an OCD perfectionist weirdo. That's part of his charm. As far as him not being on "set" every day, I think that's pretty typical for this kind of work. Tex Avery didn't sit in the laps of his animators while they were inking cells either.

Tribe wrote:cinematographer Tristan Oliver. "It's not in the least bit normal,"

Clearly, anyone who equates "normal" with "good" does not deserve to be working with Wes Anderson. [-X

Jeff wrote:As far as him not being on "set" every day, I think that's pretty typical for this kind of work.

It's not, actually.

Tristan Oliver wrote:"I've never worked on a picture where the director has been anywhere other than the studio floor!"

Jeff wrote:Tex Avery didn't sit in the laps of his animators while they were inking cells either.

Avery was an animator himself, and I'm pretty sure he did indeed stay in the studio with his team and co-ordinate production.

godardslave wrote:

Tribe wrote:cinematographer Tristan Oliver. "It's not in the least bit normal,"

Clearly, anyone who equates "normal" with "good" does not deserve to be working with Wes Anderson. [-X

Yeah man, maybe one day he'll graduate to working with directors who don't give instruction at all! Only the best directors would be that unorthodox and show that sort of respect for his abilities.

I always hear about the great animation directors at Termite Terrace life Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Chuck Jones supervising the animation so they get it just right. Even today, you hear how Brad Bird personally likes to act out the parts to get the animation itself just right. Anderson doesn't seem to be doing that.

I still love Anderson's films and I'm very excited to see this. Perhaps he was more interested in the vocal performances than the animation, but that means he might not be taking complete advantage of it. I'm a bit conflicted about how to feel.

Is anyone here going to the BFI screening Wednesday?

Cde. wrote:

Jeff wrote:As far as him not being on "set" every day, I think that's pretty typical for this kind of work.

It's not, actually.

The fact that it was foreign to Oliver (who had previously mostly worked with Nick Park & Co.) doesn't mean that others aren't doing it:

[i][url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-mrfox11-2009oct11,0,1982318.story?page=2]L.A. Times[/url][/i] wrote:Not everyone on-set was ruffled by the notion of an absentee director. "Mr. Fox's" unflappable producer Allison Abbate is a veteran of many stop-motion productions, including Selick's epochal "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and Tim Burton's Oscar-nominated "Corpse Bride." She pointed out that it wasn't unusual in the genre to issue directions from off-set.

"Tim wasn't here that much during 'Corpse Bride,' " Abbate said at Three Mills Studio last spring. "He doesn't need to be. Making stop-motion is like watching paint dry."

Cde. wrote:

Jeff wrote:Tex Avery didn't sit in the laps of his animators while they were inking cells either.

Avery was an animator himself, and I'm pretty sure he did indeed stay in the studio with his team and co-ordinate production.

Right, but he didn't supervise the drawing of every cell. Just like Anderson doesn't need to supervise the minute movements and photography of every puppet. He oversees and supervises the production.

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:Even today, you hear how Brad Bird personally likes to act out the parts to get the animation itself just right. Anderson doesn't seem to be doing that.

He did:

[i][url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-mrfox11-2009oct11,0,1982318.story?page=2]L.A. Times[/url][/i] wrote:Anderson and his editor, Andrew Weisblum, devised a system of communicating with the London-based animators via computer. The animators would send short digital film files of what they were working on and in return receive detailed e-mail instructions about what to change. "The e-mails are really thorough and very specific about certain gestures, how he wants a look to happen," said Brad Schiff, one of nearly 30 animators who worked on the movie.

As well, for reference, the director would send short films of himself enacting certain scenes. "It's kind of embarrassing," Anderson said, laughing. "For most of these things, the performance is just a few seconds. Somebody hearing a noise and looking at their watch. The simplest way to relate how to do it is to make these little movies."

Despite Anderson's absence, there's no doubt about who the director was. His signature is on every frame. The people who complain about his absence are the same ones complaining about his total control and exactitude, which strikes me as a contradiction. His technique here seems perfectly reasonable and his complete dismissal of the way slick, modern stop-motion is usually done seems to have produced something utterly charming. However the movie turns out, the lack of professionalism demonstrated by Oliver and Gustafson's comments to the press probably doesn't bode well for their future employment...unless the California Raisins make a comeback.

Jeff wrote:

Cde. wrote:

Jeff wrote:Tex Avery didn't sit in the laps of his animators while they were inking cells either.

Avery was an animator himself, and I'm pretty sure he did indeed stay in the studio with his team and co-ordinate production.

Right, but he didn't supervise the drawing of every cell. Just like Anderson doesn't need to supervise the minute movements and photography of every puppet. He oversees and supervises the production.

Nonetheless, he stayed on-set at all times and tried to perfect his team's animation, and the same can be said of all the other animators mentioned in this thread (Jones, Bird, Park, ect.) and virtually any great animation director you can think off.

What I've been hearing for a while is that Anderson doesn't seem quite at ease directing the puppet movement, as if he doesn't understand how stop-motion animation works. A lot of the animators were complaining that he's been trying to direct the puppets instead of the animators themselves, which was discomforting to them. The way it's been described, it seems like this came off to them as a bit of an affront to their core beliefs about their medium and what their role within it should be.

Jeff wrote:The fact that it was foreign to Oliver (who had previously mostly worked with Nick Park & Co.) doesn't mean that others aren't doing it:

[i][url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-mrfox11-2009oct11,0,1982318.story?page=2]L.A. Times[/url][/i] wrote:Not everyone on-set was ruffled by the notion of an absentee director. "Mr. Fox's" unflappable producer Allison Abbate is a veteran of many stop-motion productions, including Selick's epochal "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and Tim Burton's Oscar-nominated "Corpse Bride." She pointed out that it wasn't unusual in the genre to issue directions from off-set.

"Tim wasn't here that much during 'Corpse Bride,' " Abbate said at Three Mills Studio last spring. "He doesn't need to be. Making stop-motion is like watching paint dry."

Alison Abbate is the producer of this film, and naturally on the verge of its release she is downplaying negative publicity. There's a reason why Tim Burton didn't need to be on set during Corpse Bride: he was one of two directors. While Burton went off to direct Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, his co-director Mike Johnson stayed in the studio with the team.

At least in terms of theatrical animated features, I believe others actually aren't doing anything like this.

Jeff wrote:Despite Anderson's absence, there's no doubt about who the director was. His signature is on every frame.

Sure. On another note, it's interesting how his trademark stylization comes off as far more normal when transplanted to the animation medium. Not that that's a complaint; the film still looks wonderful.

Jeff wrote:The people who complain about his absence are the same ones complaining about his total control and exactitude, which strikes me as a contradiction.

I can't see that they've been doing that.

Jeff wrote:However the movie turns out, the lack of professionalism demonstrated by Oliver and Gustafson's comments to the press probably doesn't bode well for their future employment...unless the California Raisins make a comeback.

It's true that their comments by some of the crew here has been fairly unprofessional, which seems to be the case all too often on big productions these days.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw considers the film a return to form for Anderson (4 out of 5):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/oct ... ilm-review" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

All the nonsense about how present Anderson was in the making of this is thrown out of the window in the first 30 seconds. This is clearly, 100% a Wes film - some will say for worse rather than better, but for me this was a big step up from his last two films (without hitting the heights of the first three). Even though the autumnal visuals, eclectic music choices, themes of family dysfunction and hipstery costumes come straight from Anderson World Inc., the process of adaptating Roald Dahl's great little book has somehow freed the director - the film feels far less hermetically sealed than the worlds of Darjeeling and Zissou. A sharp, funny script really helps, and it's 90 minutes short and sweet. I haven't been to the cinema much this year, but I can't think of three live action films that have been as purely enjoyable as this, UP, and CORALINE.

rs98762001 wrote:I haven't been to the cinema much this year, but I can't think of three live action films that have been as purely enjoyable as this, UP, and CORALINE.

Add in Mary and Max, Sita Sings the Blues and A Matter of Loaf And Death (Wallace and Gromit) and it's been a pretty tremendous year for animation. Half of my Top Ten so far.

(I haven't seen Mr. Fox yet, though I believe the dvd is already kicking around here in pirateland)

A Matter of Loaf and Death was absolutely delightful. I'm so sorry that it wasn't a feature-length film so it could be released in cinemas, it certainly could have had some more plot developments added in for padding.

The BIG question is will this come out on Criterion!?!
(2 dvd digipak would be best) [-o<
Criterion needs more animated films in the collection also.

godardslave wrote: Criterion needs animated films in the collection also.

I believe that's a tad more accurate. Really that pandora's box is reason enough I want criterion to pick this up. As for the movie, the English reviews (in general) seem to really hate that this was made by Americans. I'll admit to being ignorant of the Dahl cannon, but haven't most of his adaptations been by and with Americans with far less vitriol?